Joint Strike Fighter – Macleans.cahttp://www.macleans.ca
Canada's national weekly current affairs magazineSat, 10 Dec 2016 00:57:47 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.22012 on Parliament Hill: John Geddes sums up a year in 12 chaptershttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/yet-another-years-federal-politics-in-12-chapters/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/yet-another-years-federal-politics-in-12-chapters/#commentsSat, 29 Dec 2012 18:44:59 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=332258A search for coherence at the closing of the year

]]>How many senators did Prime Minister Stephen Harper appoint in 2012? How many years does the government allow, in its latest plan, for “development and acquisition” of F-35 fighter jets? How many premiers, provincial and territorial, attended the November economic summit in Halifax? (Hint: Saskatchewan’s just phoned in.)

In all cases, the answer is an even dozen. But for our purposes here—in this third annual installment of a year-capping look back—we’re interested in 12 only as the number of months in the calendar. Select just a single story for each, and 2012 might almost begin to show some semblance of coherence.

January: We were surprised by a speech’s ambitious tone

Stephen Harper’s run as Prime Minister has been defined so far mostly by incremental steps. His signature rhetorical gambit is to express exasperation with anyone who fails to see whatever move he’s announcing as not only sensible but unavoidable. It’s effective, but not often inspiring. And so the tone of his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last Jan. 26 was unexpected. He spoke of “major transformations” on pensions, immigration, exports and innovation. As the year progressed, he delivered modestly on pensions and boldly on immigration. On exports and innovation, however, he put no truly memorable measures in the window. But then the next election isn’t expected before 2015.

February: We added “robocalls” to the political vernacular

Ever since Harper made the Federal Accountability Act his first legislative priority back in 2006, he has tried to make ethics a Conservative brand strength. (The damage done to the Liberals by the sponsorship scandal was, after all, largely what brought him to power.) The biggest threat to that crucial element of the Tory image has been, not corruption in government, but agressive electioneering. The so-called “in-and-out” campaign financing affair hurt. The danger deepened in February when investigative journalists Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher broke what would be the first of a string of stories on possible abuse of automated phone calls—or robocalls—to confuse voters about where to cast their ballots. Elections Canada’s investigations into the matter continue.

March: We concluded the New Democrats must want to win

Heading toward the NDP’s March 24 vote for a successor to the late Jack Layton, serious doubts remained about the party’s seriousness. Was Layton’s 2011 election breakthrough, especially in Quebec, a watershed or an aberration? The choice of the next leader would signal how the party saw itself. Brian Topp represented continuity with Layton’s team. Topp made many party officials feel at ease. Thomas Mulcair, on the other hand, was a relative newcomer to the NDP, whose sometimes acerbic style unsettled insiders. But unlike Topp, a backroom guy, Mulcair was a battle-hardened front-bench political performer. He looked like an instant contender, not an on-the-job learner. Mulcair’s win made Harper’s job harder, and raised the bar for the Liberals in choosing a new leader of their own.

April: We were reminded of a watchdog’s enviable credibility

In an era when few federal institutions are entirely unsullied—witness the woes of, for instance, the RCMP—the Auditor General of Canada continues to command almost universal respect. Former AG Sheila Fraser retired from the office an iconic figure. Her successor, Michael Ferguson, appointed to the post in late 2011, made an immediate impact with his first report. Ferguson’s spring 2012 audit featured a sharply critical review of the government’s program to acquire F-35 fighter jets. The F-35 was already the focus of unrelenting criticism. But only Ferguson’s report was accepted as definitive—a clear sign of his office’s reputation. The government accepted the need to look again at alternatives. So the F-35’s future is uncertain. And the AG’s clout is unquestioned.

May: We eavesdropped as an MP revealed the obvious

The government’s budget bill, C-38, was packed with more measures than critics said should ever be crammed into one piece of legislation. Conservatives insisted the unwieldy omnibus act was just fine. But then backbench Tory MP David Wilks was caught on amateur video telling a group of his constituents in Revelstoke, B.C., that they were right to think the bill should be broken up—but that he was powerless to oppose it alone. Wilks spoke dejectedly about how party discipline works, how the Prime Minister and cabinet tell ordinary MPs how to vote. Nobody was surprised when he later released a statement affirming, despite what he’d said, his support for the budget legislation. So ended a brief respite from the monotonous pretence of caucus solidarity.

June: We enjoyed the skilled voice of what might have been

In an era marked by indifference to oratory on Parliament Hill, listening to Toronto MP Bob Rae is a source of open pride for Liberals and secret envy for rival partisans. Rae can lift a text off the page, improvise in Question Period, crack a joke in the scrums. So complete a politician is he that nearly everybody around Parliament Hill assumed—and some confidently predicted—he would run (again) for the Liberal leadership. When he announced in June that he would not, Rae’s explained his decision to the shocked media with poise and humour. Many Liberals wonder if they shouldn’t have picked Rae to lead them in 2006, when he lost to Stéphane Dion. Now, it seems inevitable that whenever the next Liberal leader falters, some will whisper again, “Too bad we didn’t go with Bob.”

July: We realized provinces can play energy politics, too

The notion that Ottawa, under Stephen Harper, is an oil town is pretty much beyond dispute. His descriptions of Canada as an “emerging energy superpower” include hydro and nuclear, but fossil fuels predominate. His government’s devotion to building pipelines is steadfast. But how free is he to drive development? In July, Christy Clark, British Columbia’s embattled premier, who must fight an election next spring, set tough terms for approving the Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta’s oilsands to a B.C. coastal port. Along with environmental conditions, she demanded a share of the economic benefits. And so the stage was set for an epic fight with Alberta—and a potential setback to Harper’s signature strategy for Canadian economic development.

August: We found out how Tories would return ethics fire

Ever since the Conservative party was fined $52,000 in the fall of 2011 for breaking political finance laws in the 2006 campaign—in the so-called “in-and-out” affair—the party’s hardball election tactics have left it vulnerable to charges of ethical lapses. The robocalls stories (see above) amplified that danger. So the news that the NDP had been forced to repay more than $300,000 in advertising revenue collected from unions at three policy conventions, after Elections Canada ruled the sponsorships violated bans on union and corporate donations, was a gift to the governing party. There could be no doubting the Conservatives would exploit the mistake: whenever pressed, the government’s defenders have unfailingly raised the official Opposition’s own misstep.

September: We felt federalists brace for change in Quebec City

All in all, 2012 was a year when provincial politics mattered more than usual at the federal level. Pipeline squabbles between the two westernmost provinces. The premier of Ontario forced to step down. But arguably the most unsettling transition was the September election of a separatist government in Quebec City. Pauline Marois, the new Parti Québécois premier, would be replacing Jean Charest, the long-serving, firm federalist who understood Ottawa—where he was once a boy-wonder minister in Brian Mulroney’s cabinet—better than most provincial politicians. And how concerned was Harper? Enough for him to arrange, a few months earlier when the PQ victory was in the wind, to meet privately with Mulroney to talk Quebec strategy.

October: We took in the spectacle of style in the spotlight

The month began with the breathlessly awaited official launch of Justin Trudeau’s bid for the Liberal leadership. Trudeau had begun the year claiming he wouldn’t run—leading the party wouldn’t, he said, leave him enough time to devote to his young children. Then came his March 31 victory over Tory Senator Patrick Brazeau in a charity boxing bout, which, rather absurdly, boosted his standing. Months of heated speculation followed. By fall, his entry felt inevitable. His launch speech in his Montréal riding staked a claim to a middle path between what he dismissed as the “ideological answers” of the Conservatives and NDP. Trudeau would strive to add substance in the months that followed, but few doubted his style was what kept him in the frontrunner’s position.

November: We celebrated—sort of—a star’s career move

The rise of Mark Carney from promising public servant to unlikely celebrity was one of the most intriguing stories of the past decade on the federal scene. Lured to Ottawa in 2003 from investment banking, Carney became Bank of Canada governor in 2008. He swiftly established himself as a bright light among the world’s central bankers. In late November, he announced that next June he will take over as governor of the Bank of England. Some Canadians took pride in Brits seeing one of our own as the top guy in the field. Others felt Carney’s move showed how Canada remains in the economic minor leagues. Reports later suggested he only opted for London after ruling out a try for the Liberal leadership. He might not be gone for good—his London appointment is for five short years.

December: We couldn’t be sure if a fighter jet buy is on or off

Arguably the most mismanaged major federal project of the past few years has been the plan to buy 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets. From the moment Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced Canada’s apparent commitment to the procurement in 2010, questions about the real nature of the project have plagued the government. Was there really no other jet worth considering? (It turned out, there were.) How much would the F-35s really cost? (The latest estimate, $45.8 billion over 42 years.) The government released a stack of reports in December to clarify the costs and pledge to explore the possibility of buying another, likely cheaper aircraft. Still, as long as the F-35 remains a live option, the hard political decision on this horribly bungled file remain in the future.

( Looking further back: here are 2010 and 2011 in federal politics, each in 12 chapters.)

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/yet-another-years-federal-politics-in-12-chapters/feed/6A clearer path for fighter jets, but a grim day for Peter MacKayhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/a-clearer-path-for-jet-fighters-but-a-grim-day-for-mackay/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/a-clearer-path-for-jet-fighters-but-a-grim-day-for-mackay/#commentsWed, 12 Dec 2012 23:54:36 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=327649John Geddes explains why rebooting the plan is not as easy as pressing a button

]]>It was painful to listen to Defence Minister Peter MacKay this afternoon as he faced repeated questions from reporters on whether he has any regrets about his handling of the government’s program to buy F-35 fighter jets.

Today’s news, not surprisingly, is that the problem-plagued Lockheed Martin jet is only one of several whose costly tires the government will soon be kicking. And so pretty much everything MacKay has ever said about the necessity and inevitability of the F-35 procurement has proven to be dead wrong.

He might have made it easier to hear his answers without wincing had he just admitted to past mistakes. Failing that mature, obvious response, he might have clung to a fragment of dignity by resolving at least not to drag Canadian men and women in uniform into it.

But no. His couldn’t restrain himself. He couldn’t resist bringing up his concern for the troops when pointedly asked if he had any regrets about his past harsh words toward critics who raised what turned out to be entirely valid concerns about the F-35 program.

“Look I’m very proud of what the Canadian Forces do,” he answered, as if that were germane. “I work with them daily. I feel very passionately about the obligation that I hold as minister of national defence to ensure that they have the best equipment that enables them to have mission success, to do their work, work that we ask of them, where they put themselves willingly in harm’s way.”

MacKay’s passionate feeling, we’re left to suppose, must be why he announced that the Canadian government was committed to buying 65 F-35s without properly disclosing the full costs, as was later conclusively established in a damning report last spring by the federal Auditor General. And why he slapped back criticisms with overblown warnings, like the one about how failing to press ahead with the F-35 buy would expose Canada to “real danger we’ll be unable to defend and exercise our sovereignty.”

Every element of his and the government’s earlier line of argument on the F-35—that it was the only jet that could possibly do the job, that the cost had been properly assessed and explained to taxpayers, that there was no chance an open bidding process might get Canada an adequate fighter for a better price—has been thoroughly junked.

As of today’s release of a stack of new documents, accompanied by a background briefing for reporters and a news conference featuring MacKay and Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose (now the lead minister of the file), the jet fighter picture is considerably clearer and more credible.

Based on a new formula set by the consulting firm KPMG, the full cost if Canada went ahead with buying 65 F-35s, spread over 12 years of development and 30 years of flying, is estimated at $45.8 billion. To check out the other jets available on the international market—and belatedly determine what they might cost and how they might match up with Canada’s needs—the government has appointed a panel of four independent experts.

“We have hit the reset button,” Ambrose said in what was clearly meant to be the day’s takeaway phrase, “and are taking the time to do a complete assessment of all available aircraft.”

That sounded refreshingly brisk and practical. It was certainly a good deal easier to listen to than MacKay’s self-serving digression on his devotion to the troops. But of course it’s not as easy as pressing a button.

For starters, Canada is a paid-up member of a nine-country consortium—led by the U.S. and also including Britain, Italy, Holland, Turkey, Australia, Norway and Denmark—to bring the F-35 into production. All signed up planning to buy the F-35, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter. Another report released today said 72 Canadian companies have secured contracts worth nearly $500 million under that arrangement, and that about $9 billion more in “opportunities” have been identified by Industry Canada.

This week in the House, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued warnings about the work Canadian aerospace companies would lose if Canada dropped out of the F-35 club. “Canadian companies,” he said, “have hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts for that [fighter jet] work, and the government has no intention of ripping up those contracts.”

On the other hand, a senior government official briefing reporters today said it is possible Canada might somehow remain part of the F-35 consortium, even if the government ultimately decides to ask Lockheed Martin to compete with other jet makers for the fighter contract. But after the briefing, asked by Maclean’s how that would work, the official said staying in F-35 group while running a competitive bidding process would be “technically possible but extremely difficult.”

So it seems the reset button has been pushed only as far as taking a look at the alternatives on the market is concerned. The truly tough politics won’t come until the government must decide either to abandon the F-35 project or stick with it. Either flight path will be highly controversial. Whichever it is, one can only guess MacKay won’t be the minister explaining the course ahead.

]]>After a flurry of subtly conflicting stories, the most likely next step in the federal government’s hopelessly bungled program to buy Canada some new fighter jets now looks like the appointment next week of an expert panel, which will be asked to survey the available options.

To the blissfully uninitiated, that must sound blandly sensible. To the rest of us, the panel’s very existence will finally refute and rebuke several years of insistence by Conservative politicians and Department of National Defence officials that Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was the only plausible jet for Canada’s future needs. No point, they told us, to look any further.

But if the naming of an independent panel represents the welcome injection of a more open-minded approach, its creation alone doesn’t guarantee either of two developments that critics of the F-35 are hoping for: it doesn’t mean the F-35 is out of the running and it doesn’t mean the government will ultimately hold a competitive bidding process for the new jets.

We won’t be sure until next week exactly what the panel will be asked to explore. But Christian Leuprecht, a security expert in Kingston, Ont., jointly appointed to the Royal Military College and Queen’s University, says one thing is clear: the panel will find cheaper off-the-shelf options available, including U.S. Boeing’s F-18 Super Hornet, the European EADS consortium’s Eurofighter, Saab of Sweden’s Gripen, Dassault of France’s Rafale.

“A number of these planes you can get for 50 per cent to 75 per cent of the cost of the F-35,” Leuprecht says. But he stresses that’s just considering the up-front cost. The F-35 might still turn out to offer significant advantages in terms of long-term maintenance costs, expected lifespan and, especially, operational versatility. “I think the government wants to come back and say, ‘We’ve looked at the F-35 and four others, and here are our options’.”

Wouldn’t that sort of candid clarity be a refreshing change? Throughout the F-35 decision-making process, federal officials consistently tried to shut down any discussion of other options for what they used to call our “fifth-generation” fighter. “Let’s state the obvious,” Dan Ross, then the top Defence bureaucrat on the file, told MPs on the House defence committee a couple of years back, “you must have more than one viable supplier to have a competition. There is only one fifth-generation fighter available.”

And that was, of course, the F-35. Starting last spring, though, the government pivoted sharply away from that position. Even the new chief of defence staff, formerly a big fan of the F-35, said recently other options exist. But even with that acknowledgment, Leuprecht says, there’s no reason to assume a full-blown call for competitive bids must eventually follow. “Whether it ends up having a competitive process or not,” he says, “the government wants to have a much better rationale for why this is the best choice, or why it’s not the best choice.”

The panel will reportedly be asked to submit its findings sometime early next year. That seems hurried, but time to come to a decision is not unlimited. The CF-18 fighters Canada now flies are expected to be phased out between 2017 and 2020. “New planes don’t show up overnight,” Leuprecht says. “By the time we train pilots, this can be a two-, three-, four-year lead time.

But if the panel must work fast, Leuprecht points out it will hardly be toiling in isolation. There’s the KPMG report on the F-35 program that’s to be released next week, confirming much higher lifetime costs for the Joint Strike Fighter than previously admitted by the government. There’s whatever the Public Works bureaucrats who took over the lead on this file from Defence last year are discovering. And there’s the viewpoint of Defence, likely still staunchly pro-F-35.

From all these sources of analysis, the government needs to find a way out of this maze of its own creation. Next week might look like a fresh start, but the hard choices still loom for sometime in 2013.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/an-f-35-panel-great-but-the-hard-decisions-still-loom/feed/9Canada’s new top general on the F-35http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-new-top-general-on-the-f-35-fighter-jet/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-new-top-general-on-the-f-35-fighter-jet/#commentsMon, 27 Aug 2012 15:12:10 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=286403The No. 1 question for the country's No. 1 soldier? John Geddes has the answer

]]>As Canada’s new Chief of Defence Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tom Lawson takes on an massively complex task heading up the Forces just as the government looks to overhaul its “Canada First Defence Strategy.” Yet of all the questions Lawson might be have been asked, one overshadowed all others as his was introduced as CDS by Defence Minister Peter MacKay on Parliament Hill this morning.

Where does the country’s new top soldier—himself a former fighter pilot and, most recently, deputy commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado—stand on the controversial F-35 fighter jet?

After all, as a longtime top Air Force officer, Lawson has been outspoken in his support for the F-35, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter. When the U.S.-led development of the so-called next generation fighter hit a major setback early last year, it was Lawon who defended the jet “without hesitation” as “the only aircraft for the future.”

Back then, the Harper government also seemed firmly committed to the F-35. But last spring the Conservatives changed their messaging in the face of troubling questions about the multibillion-dollar cost of the acquisition, stressing that the Joint Strike Fighter was only one option and that Canada hadn’t signed any contract to buy.

So how did Lawson handle the inevitable questions about whether or not Canada should buy these jets? Here was his initial, cautious response: “The F-35 in particular is part of a whole-of-government effort and we will continue to take our lead on the F-35 from the government.”

Pressed to be clearer on his own preferences, he said: “The F-35 is a program that is hitting milestones and doing quite well. It will continue to contend for the replacement for the CF-18. I’ll be providing our best advice throughout the process.”

That bit about “hitting milestones” was as close as an endorsement as he came. Hardly emphatic. Still, as his only hint at an assessment, it was definitely on the positive side. It would be fair, then, to guess that Canada’s new top general remains favourably disposed, as he has been in the past, toward the most contentious military procurement of recent times.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-new-top-general-on-the-f-35-fighter-jet/feed/3The F-35s and other military procurement tales of horrorhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-f-35s-and-other-military-procurement-tales-of-horror/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-f-35s-and-other-military-procurement-tales-of-horror/#commentsTue, 03 Apr 2012 22:27:53 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=250496It would be difficult to imagine a more thoroughly botched military procurement program than the F-35 fiasco that has been taken apart today in a report from Michael Ferguson, the…

]]>It would be difficult to imagine a more thoroughly botched military procurement program than the F-35 fiasco that has been taken apart today in a report from Michael Ferguson, the Auditor General of Canada.

Hard to imagine, that is, unless you consider the military’s purchases of new Cyclone helicopters, which soared in price from a planned $3.1 billion in 2003 to an actual $5.7 billion five years later, and Chinook helicopters, the cost of which leapt from just over $2 billion to nearly $5 billion between 2006 and 2003. Ferguson’s predecessor, former AG Sheila Fraser, slammed the Defence department in a fall 2010 report for disguising the true eventual price of those buys.

Or, if you’re looking for yet another example to rival the F-35 debacle, there’s the plan to replace Canada’s aging fleet of search and rescue planes, first announced in the spring of 2004, supposedly fast-tracked in 2008 by Defence Minister Peter MacKay, and still pending after all these years. That multibillion-dollar program was derailed and delayed by howls of outrage from aerospace industry companies over claims that the procurement specifications were skewed to favour a plane made by Europe’s Alenia.

It’s worth considering both of these examples if you’re trying to sort out what might possibly be going on with the F-35. Fraser’s scorching critique of the purchases of the Chinooks and Cyclones suggests the most nefarious possibility: that federal bureaucrats in charge of buying military hardware systematically lowball cost estimates to try to get politicians to approve the equipment they want.

The saga of the long-delayed search-and-rescue plane program suggests a more complex motivation, though still nowhere near a good excuse. Back in the fall of 2010, when the F-35 purchase was emerging as a big issue, I asked retired Lieutenant-General Angus Watt, a former chief of air staff, and a big fan of the Joint Strike Fighter, why not just have an open bidding process and, if the Lockheed Martin jet is so clearly the best, it would win. Watt’s answer:

“I’m not personally opposed to a competition. But the circumstances of a competition would be difficult to manage. There aren’t a lot of competitors, apart from the F-35. In fact, it’s questionable if there are any…What happens then, and I’ve seen this before in other aircraft programs, is when the government specifies [its requirements] and it turns out that only one aircraft is even close to meeting them, then the other, lesser competitors will start to attack the specifications. Rather than competing the aircraft, they compete the specifications.”

I followed up by asking him for which procurement program specifications perceived to favour one bidder became the issue, and Watt answered, “Fixed-wing search and rescue—it has paralyzed the department.”

So I look at the timing of the decision back in 2010 not to hold a normal process for acquiring fighter jets—to sole-source the F-35—and I wonder if the military— mired as it was then in seemingly endless disputes over search-and-rescue planes—just decided to try to bypass that whole messy business of open bidding.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-f-35s-and-other-military-procurement-tales-of-horror/feed/13Which part of the Bible covers jet fighter procurement?http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/which-part-of-the-bible-covers-jet-fighter-procurement/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/which-part-of-the-bible-covers-jet-fighter-procurement/#commentsThu, 09 Feb 2012 21:27:52 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=239027Julian Fantino, the associate minister of defence, responding this afternoon to questions from the NDP.Mr. Speaker, that premise is absolutely false. The member opposite is referring to a failed …

]]>Julian Fantino, the associate minister of defence, responding this afternoon to questions from the NDP.

Mr. Speaker, that premise is absolutely false. The member opposite is referring to a failed NDP candidate who wrote this report, critical of everything that is holy and decent about this government’s efforts to provide our military men and women with the resources that…

The report referred to was authored by Michael Byers (a former NDP candidate) and Stewart Webb.

Dan Ross Deputy Minister of Defence holds news conference on the acquisition of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, in Ottawa (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand)

The increasingly heated debate over what it will cost Canada to buy the new F-35 fighter jet has, from the outset, bogged down on one point—the unwavering contention of the federal government that Canada will pay way less per jet than the U.S.

This just seems, on the face of it, difficult to believe. The F-35 story features many other variables, vagaries, arcane disputes—all accompanied by acronyms and jargon of the sort that military procurement always generates in such unwelcome plentitude.

But that cost-border price differential is the hard part to get past. The Canadian government insists that each jet it buys will cost about $75 million, while numerous stories in the American media about Lockheed Martin’s troubled development of the F-35 Lightning II provide estimates about $20 million higher.

For instance, “Each plane clocks in at around $90 million,” says this recent Atlantic blog posting. And here’s Bloomberg from late last year reporting that the F-35 program “has almost doubled in cost to $92 million a jet.”

No wonder many look so skeptically on that $75 million projection from the Canadian Department of National Defence. Even moreso following last week’s report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, which projected the per jet cost at $128.8 million.

Today the Defence department offered reporters in Ottawa a detailed briefing on F-35 costs to refute the PBO’s eye-popping numbers. The department’s Dan Ross, assistant deputy minister for procurement, said the PBO’s key $128.8 million figure is based on an “unsubstantiated average unit cost.” (I have asked the PBO to elaborate on how it arrived at that number, and will post on their answer.)

As for Defence’s own price estimate, that $75 million per F-35 figure is apparently taken straight from what’s called a Selected Acquisition Report, or SAR—a quarterly Pentagon review of the costs, schedules and performance of a U.S. military procurement program. (The facts reported in the SAR seem to be widely relied on and trusted, including by Canada’s PBO.)

There are three main reasons Canada’s jets will cost less than the estimates being reported out of Washington, at least according to Ross at today’s Defence briefing:

—Canada is buying just 65 jets out of nearly 3,000 Lockheed Martin hopes to sell, and Canada has arranged to take delivery on them during the sweet spot in the production run, from 2016 to 2022, when manufacturing costs should be far lower than for the early sales. (The few F-35s made and sold so far have gone for about $140 million a pop.)

—Canada’s deal as part of the F-35 consortium shields it from paying for escalating research and development costs, which are being shouldered overwhelmingly by the U.S. It’s those R & D overruns that are the main reason overall F-35 costs have soared beyond early forecasts.

—Canada is purchasing only the “Conventional Take-off and Landing” version of the F-35, the cheapest of the three versions of the Joint Strike Fighter, and the model with by far the fewest design, development and testing problems. But U.S. reports on the F-35 generally cite the average cost per jet spread across all the three variations.

These explanations for why Ottawa’s purchase might well be less outlandishly expensive than the whole F-35 program, as viewed from Washington, are not unreasonable. So the ball is clearly in Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page’s court.

Page and his crew of number-crunchers have done excellent work as an independent check on government claims about costs, and have earned respect. But their initial report on the jets was not definitive. Valid questions are in the air. It will be interesting to see their response to today’s Defence counter strike.

A final point on this. I have reported before on the Defence department’s explanation of how Canada is getting a deal (at least compared to the U.S.) on the F-35. Understanding the multibillion-dollar price tag is obviously an important element of this high-stakes debate.

Not, however, the most important part. Whether acquiring and maintaining these jets costs $14.7 billion, as Defence forecasts, or $29.3 billion, as the PBO projects, we still have to be reasonably sure that Canada needs them.

Is a fleet of advanced fighter jets really our top military procurement priority? At either price, the implicit answer is yes. I’ve asked what exactly the Joint Strike Fighter is for, and I’m not sure the case has been persuasively made. By all means, let’s probe the price. But let’s consider the purpose, too.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-f-35-jet-costs-controversy-now-were-getting-somewhere/feed/118Public relationshttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/public-relations-2/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/public-relations-2/#respondThu, 17 Feb 2011 14:12:43 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=173185David Pugliese looks at the campaign to sell the F-35 purchase.Figures obtained by the Liberals show public servants at National Defence headquarters charged taxpayers at least 600 hours of …

Figures obtained by the Liberals show public servants at National Defence headquarters charged taxpayers at least 600 hours of overtime to organize a news conference and seven events to promote the purchase of the F-35 aircraft to defence analysts, academics and some industry representatives … Defence Department sources have told the Ottawa Citizen some officers have been uncomfortable with the situation but the military is being pressured by the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister’s Office to spearhead the sales effort.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/public-relations-2/feed/0The best plane money can buyhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-best-plane-money-can-buy/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-best-plane-money-can-buy/#commentsMon, 24 Jan 2011 17:40:52 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=168502While two former members of the Canadian military defend the purchase of new F-35s, an American military analyst questions the cost.I can guarantee to you, however, that the unit …

]]>While two former members of the Canadian military defend the purchase of new F-35s, an American military analyst questions the cost.

I can guarantee to you, however, that the unit cost Canada will pay for a complete, operational F-35A will be well in excess of $70 million – even taking into account whatever exclusion of American costs to develop the aircraft your government may be able to negotiate. If and when Canada signs an actual purchase contract for F-35As in 2014, as I understand is currently planned, the real question is what multiple of CAD$70 million will Canada have to pay? I do not believe it unreasonable to expect a multiplication factor of two.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-best-plane-money-can-buy/feed/69Lives at stakehttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/lives-at-stake/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/lives-at-stake/#respondFri, 14 Jan 2011 19:10:15 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=167057The Prime Minister defends the government’s purchase of fighter jets.“Contracts like this are not a political game,” Harper said, speaking from a blue podium with government Action Plan slogans …

“Contracts like this are not a political game,” Harper said, speaking from a blue podium with government Action Plan slogans perched in front of him and behind him. “It is about lives and, as you well know, it is about jobs.”

It is unclear from that report whose “lives” are being invoked in this particular case, but the Prime Minister has in the past invoked the “lives” of Canadian Forces members to defend his procurement policy.

October 27. However, let me tell everyone about the responsibilities we have. We have a responsibility to replace fighter aircraft and not play politics with the lives of our men and women in uniform. We have a responsibility, when it is National Aviation Day, to ensure we protect the people, the men and women who work in that industry, against the irresponsible behaviour of the Leader of the Opposition and his coalition. That is what we will do.

November 17. The government’s position is clear. It is straightforward. The opposition is simply playing politics with the lives of air force members and with jobs in the Canadian aerospace industry.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/lives-at-stake/feed/0The value of the F-35http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-value-of-the-f-35/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-value-of-the-f-35/#respondFri, 07 Jan 2011 21:39:36 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=166226While the American joint strike fighter program continues to be a source of questions, Philippe Lagassé and Justin Massie figure we’ll end up buying the planes one way or the…

]]>While the American joint strike fighter program continues to be a source of questions, Philippe Lagassé and Justin Massie figure we’ll end up buying the planes one way or the other.

While both sides have a case to make with respect to the procurement costs and industrial benefits, the sovereignty question sidesteps the larger issue behind this purchase. Although the F-35’s ability to defend Canadian airspace was surely taken into account, that is not what makes this plane especially attractive to the government and the air force. The value of the F-35 is that it will permit Canada to take part in multinational air operations overseas for decades to come. Put simply, in buying these aircraft, the government will ensure that Canada can play a visible role in future allied air campaigns across the world.

In fact, if the Liberals eventually form a government, it’s this aspect of the F-35 that is likely to persuade them to go through with the purchase, however grudgingly.

]]>David Pugliese’s three-part series on the proposed purchase of 65 F-35s—see here, here and here—is an altogether epic tale of confusion, misdirection and the unexplained.

In the 1980s, when Canada’s Air Force was looking for a new fighter jet — eventually picking the CF-18 — it gathered the competing aircraft at Cold Lake, Alberta, for rigorous flight tests. One military participant recalls tens of thousands of pages of aerospace evaluation data and flight test details. Among those taking part was then military pilot Laurie Hawn, now the Conservative point man on the JSF file.

But Canada decided on the JSF without testing it against competing planes. Boeing and French aircraft manufacturer Dassault would later confirm DND never asked nor received high-level performance data from them. The developmental nature of the JSF, in itself, violated DND’s criteria for a replacement aircraft. In 2006, department officials stated that any CF-18 replacement would have to be an aircraft in operation with an allied force, according to records obtained by the Citizen.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/how-to-spend-21-billion/feed/0The sales jobhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-sales-job/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-sales-job/#commentsMon, 22 Nov 2010 18:02:02 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=159472David Pugliese explains how the government hopes to sell the purchase of new F-35s.The plan is for DND officials to brief analysts about the value of the JSF … …

]]>David Pugliese explains how the government hopes to sell the purchase of new F-35s.

The plan is for DND officials to brief analysts about the value of the JSF … Defence Watch has been told that the Joint Strike Fighter PR plan envisions that the analysts will then go out to newspapers, TV and radio to spread the word about the worth of the F-35 as well as the message that the Harper government is making the right move with this proposed $16 billion purchase. Or that they will be ready with such messages when journalists come calling as they write JSF stories…

Meanwhile, a new round of visits of Conservative ministers and MPs to companies who have F-35 contracts, or the potential for F-35 contracts begins again today … Sources tell Defence Watch that the politicians aren’t highlighting new contracts (some of these were awarded years ago).

Meanwhile, sources tell Pugliese the government has kept secret millions in equipment purchases for the Afghan mission.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-sales-job/feed/32Talking F-35s with a former head of the air forcehttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/talking-f-35s-with-a-former-head-of-the-air-force/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/talking-f-35s-with-a-former-head-of-the-air-force/#commentsFri, 29 Oct 2010 15:40:24 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=155136Lieutenant-General Angus Watt retired about a year ago as chief of air staff in the Canadian
Forces. That gives him a particular vantage point on the government’s plan to spend…

]]>Lieutenant-General Angus Watt retired about a year ago as chief of air staff in the Canadian
Forces. That gives him a particular vantage point on the government’s plan to spend about $16 billion to buy and maintain 65 F-35 fighter jets—close enough to know the details, but a bit detached from the ferocious debate that’s erupted over the sole-sourced procurement.

Not surprisingly, Watt is a big fan of the Lockheed Martin jet, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter. He’s a sharp critic, though, of the job the federal government is doing selling the deal to the Canadian public. This is an edited version of his conversation with me earlier this week about the controversial F-35 project.

Q. Do you think the F-35 arrangement as it now stands makes sense for Canada?

A. I do. It’s the best of all the available choices. It provides the best value for money, the best platform to address the security needs of Canada through to 2050, which is probably how long we’ll have this airplane.

Q. I’ll come back to why you think it’s the best jet. But you mention best value for money. We usually make sure of that by holding a competitive bidding process. Why not do so in this case?

A. That’s a good question. I’m not personally opposed to a competition. But the circumstances of a competition would be difficult to manage. There aren’t a lot of competitors, apart from the F-35. In fact, it’s questionable if there are any.

Q. So if we had a proper competitive process, wouldn’t the F-35 be the clear front-runner or even the only bidder?

A. What happens then, and I’ve seen this before in other aircraft programs, is when the government specifies [its requirements] and it turns out that only one aircraft is even close to meeting them, then the other, lesser competitors will start to attack the specifications. Rather than competing the aircraft, they compete the specifications. Then we end up in a big debate about whether we need fifth-generation technology, sensors, all that sort of equipment, rather than competing on the basis of the available aircraft.

Q. For which aircraft purchase has disputing the specs become the issue?

A. Fixed-wing search and rescue. It has paralyzed the department.

Q. But how can we know that all those specifications the F-35 apparently meets—the attributes of a so-called fifth-generation fighter—are really what Canada needs?

A. The Department of National Defence, I know, did a very extensive analysis—not a true competition, I understand—of all the available platforms. It clearly showed the F-35 was head and shoulders above all the other ones. If they wanted to run a competition, fine. But I’m worried about that matter of attacking the specifications.

Q. On the need for a new fighter jet, some critics have pointed to the government’s emphasis on patroling the Arctic as an outmoded Cold War preoccupation. Isn’t the threat of Russian bombers long past?

A. One of the problems is that the government has not had a very good communications strategy here. They essentially went out with the announcement, with very few details, and asked everybody to accept it. I personally have seen the work that underpins the project and I know they have a very good outline of what capabilities are needed. There is enough of a package to show the Canadian people what the needs of Canadian security are for the next 30 or 40 years.

Q. And what are those needs?

A. It’s not just the NORAD need of chasing aging Soviet bombers in the Arctic. That’s a very narrow view. Canada’s interests are global. Our prosperity and security come from our engagement around the world. You can’t just draw a line around North America and say, ‘We’re not going to participate in any security operations outside those borders, but we’re certainly going to take economic advantage of that security in order to gain prosperity for our nation.’

So [without new fighter jets] when NATO decides to intervene—like they did in Kosovo the late nineties, and did a bombing campaign with our F-18s participating—we would not be able to participate. To me that undermines our credibility and our influence. Other nations, our allies and our potential foes, notice. Participating in an alliance of like-minded nations under the rubric of UN or NATO is very much in our security interests.

Q. And exactly how does the F-35 fit into that sort of scenario?

A. If we send our troops abroad on some operation in the future, I don’t think it’s good enough to say, ‘Well, we’ll send our troops over there, but we’re not going to provide air support because some other nation will.’

Q. Is the Afghanistan experience one of the reasons we haven’t heard a lot about the F-35’s capability to providing close air support for ground troops engaged in counter-insurgency fighting? I’m thinking of how using air strikes in Afghanistan has become very controversial because of civilian casualties.

A. I spent six months in Afghanistan as deputy commander for air. I was essentially the air component commander for ISAF in 2006. I can tell you that air power saves soldiers’ lives. There is a good case to be made but it just hasn’t been made.

Q. You don’t hear the Conservative government making that case now?

A. Overall communications have been weak. But we’ve seen that before with the government. They are very parsimonious, shall we say, with their communications. We need a rigorous debate. We need to hash it out in public.

Q. Let’s say the case for new jet fighters was more compellingly established. Wouldn’t that still leave open the option of buying a cheaper, less cutting-edge fighter than the F-35, one that’s already on the market?

A. The F-35 gives us a jet at the beginning of its technological life span. If you buy a jet at the end of its life span, that means in five to ten years it’s going to be obsolete. That means you’re going to have to try to add technology and that’s really tough. The growth potential, the ability to evolve this jet over the next 30-40 years, far surpasses anything else on the market.

Q. There are defence analysts who say the really technologically advanced idea would be to shift to relying more on pilotless drones. What about that option?

A. It’s not there yet. There’s going to be one more generation of manned fighters, carrying through to 2030, 2040. The technology is not mature enough yet for what we call UCAVs—Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles.

Q. There’s another line of criticism—that the F-35 is a basically an expensive toy, and Canada just doesn’t need a cool stealth fighter.

A. Stealth is not some voodoo technology that lets you go in and willy-nilly take over Third World nations at will. It simply allows the pilot to survive. It isn’t necessary for every mission, but for some. For instance, reconnaissance. They can go quietly into territory, undetected, and come back safely. Or they can do a mission like the Kosovo bombing campaign, where there was a fairly sophisticated air defence system, and come back completely safely.

Q. A final question. The F-35 purchase, if it goes ahead, will be hugely expensive. Even if it’s the best choice among fighter jets, isn’t there a strong argument that, in a time of spending restraint, Canada could make more practical use of other new equipment, like icebreakers or those search and rescue planes?

A. That’s a false dilemma, one often posed about military spending. If you do this, you preclude that. One of the key elements that the military struggles with is to preserve a balance in all areas. Having an incredible capability in the air, while denuding the army and sinking the navy, doesn’t work. There’s a whole range of programs that seek to maintain that balance. In the planning cycle, there is that balance, and buying these fighters does not preclude those other things.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/talking-f-35s-with-a-former-head-of-the-air-force/feed/67Could Canada take bids on fighter jets and also keep the F-35 option open?http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/could-canada-take-bids-on-fighter-jets-and-also-keep-the-f-35-option-open/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/could-canada-take-bids-on-fighter-jets-and-also-keep-the-f-35-option-open/#commentsWed, 27 Oct 2010 21:34:20 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=154696Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s vow that as prime minister he would hold an open competition for new jet fighters, rather than proceeding with the F-35 deal that the Conservatives want…

]]>Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s vow that as prime minister he would hold an open competition for new jet fighters, rather than proceeding with the F-35 deal that the Conservatives want to pursue, sounds smart enough. All things being equal, open bidding for defence contracts is the way to go.

Yet it’s interesting that Ignatieff doesn’t appear quite ready to leave the controversial F-35 agreement behind in the dust. He seems to tacitly concede that the F-35 scheme has something going for it by asserting that a Liberal government would somehow remain part of that arrangement, while sort of walking away from it.

“There is no penalty for cancelling the current deal and holding an open competition for our next fighter jet,” says the Liberal news release. “A Liberal government would remain committed to the 2006 Memorandum of Understanding that gives Canadian industry access to F-35 contracts, without any obligation to purchase the planes.”

In other words, Ignatieff suggests that a Liberal government could scrap the agreement to buy Lockheed Martin’s so-called Joint Strike Fighter—at least for long enough to check out the competition—and yet “remain committed” to the complex, eight-country MoU that sets the terms for designing, developing and, ultimately, manufacturing Lockheed Martin’s so-called Joint Strike Fighter.

But Dan Ross, the Department of National Defence’s associate deputy minister for materiel, told the House defence committee just last week that Canada can’t have it both ways. “In terms of the JSF MoU, it should be made clear that, in order to run a competition, Canada would be forced to withdraw from the MoU,” Ross told the MPs.

“If we withdrew from the MoU,” he continued, “we would lose key benefits. We would be subject to penalties, the industrial guarantees we already have would be negated, and Canada’s industrial plans with our partners would be suspended.”

So a fundamental point is in dispute here. Ignatieff asserts Canada can edge away from the F-35 consortium, at least temporarily, without ditching the juicy parts of the deal. Ross asserts that the government can do no such thing. Sorting this out is important because, as things stand, the F-35 terms look pretty favourable. Unless DND is dissembling wildly, the deal shields Canada from the cost overruns now plaguing the design and development of the jets.

If that’s true, then the real question might not be so much whether Canada might get a better deal on some other aircraft, but whether we need new fighter jets at all. This is the point that’s been emphasized by the most outspoken critic of the purchase, defence policy analyst Steven Staples of the Rideau Institute.

“The point is that Canada does not need high-end fighter-bomber capabilities for expeditionary roles,” Staples wrote in his report Pilot Error: Why the F-35 stealth fighter is wrong for Canada. “The decision to acquire such capabilities is thus a matter of choice, not necessity. Since such capabilities are also not required for the surveillance and control of North American airspace, there is no good argument for procuring the F-35.”

The case that Canada might not need fighter jets at all strikes me as more plausible than anything I’ve heard so far about the chances of Canada securing a much better deal by considering bids from the makers of the other available jets.